Hello friends, first of all I want to excuse me for my bad english level. I hope you can understand what I want to explain, that is how to prepare artificial food for our phasmids.

IMPORTANT: In my opinion the best option is to give to the animal the fresh foodplants and I only developed this method to feed animals that eat plants that I do not have available during the year , as happened for me with Archrioptera or Diapherodes species.

Method: I will use Diapherodes gigantea´s fodder as example. It has the next stages:

A-Dehydrate the plants: I take the plants I will use to make the fodder that depends on the phasmid specie.For Diapherodes gigantea I use 50% Eucalyptus globulus and 50% Laurum nobilis. You take about 1 kg of every plant and first of all you crush them in water since you get a thin powder. After that the best option to put out all the water is first to squeeze well the mix and after that introduce the mix in the oven for about 4 hours with a low temperature (40 ºC) in order to destroy the less proteins you can. When the powder is well dehydrate you put it in a hermetic bottle. This bottle will be the pantry we will have to make the fodder for 8-10 times. If you have not got problems to get the food plant you will not need to dehydrate it, the problem comes when you have to take your car for a long time to get the plants so only in this case you use the first method to have a good pantry of the plant.

B- Rehydrate the plant: For Diapherodes gigantea´s fodder I take about 60 g of the powder plants and I put 0,8 l of water in order to boil it. You have to put some agar and the quantity of agar depends on the mark of agar that you use. I always use PANREAC or OMEGA and the bottle´s ticket say how much agar you need to prepare a litter of medium. I normally use about 20% more because we need to get some resistant fodder sheets of 2 mm of thickness. After add the agar the mix must boil 3 minutes and you put it out of the fire after that time. It is important to know that the agar will harden when the temperature arrives to 35-45ºC. When it arrives to 45 you must add some vitamins complex to recover the vitamins you lose when you boil the water. You can add some acetic acid or other substance to anticipate the appearance of mildews.

C- Form the sheets: Now you must be fast because the agar is going to harden soon. You will need a big and clean surface as a table where you will extend the mix. After 10 minutes you will have an elastic sheet of fodder. It must have 2 mm of thickness. Now you can cut it in pieces of the size you need (it depends on the plants and for Diapherodes gigantean I use 12 x 4 cm). You hang the pieces in different parts of the terrarium. “After that your animals can go to the table to eat”.

Results: I have used this method successfully for several species as Archrioptera fallax, Diapherodes gigantean, Haaniella grayii, Eurycnema goliath,.... I have not observed any problem. The fodder lasts approximately 6 days in the terrarium after which it is dehydrated and rusts so you need to change it.

I hope you find interesting this method that needs a little work but perhaps lets you produce rare or difficult species. I insist that it is better to use fresh plants providing that it is possible.

the report from Daniel is interesting! I have seen a photo of the type material of Asceles glaber which is preserved at the Indian Museum. The specimens from Myanmar seem PSG 267, but the type-series contains also unrelated species.

I only point out that the year of publication of Günther's paper is 1938, not 1935.